The NTSB has stated that the event recorder on the locomotive (on the trailing end of the train) was not required to be working; because it was on the trailing end. They seemed to have dismissed the failure of the one not working on the basis that it was relatively old, and dating from 1995. These comments raise several questions that I have not seen addressed or answered.

CFR Title 49 Part 229.135 covers the subject of event recorders. The presence of the event recorder is noted on the blue card unless the locomotive is set up such that said locomotive cannot operate with a defective recorder.

I don't understand the above justification for the recorder not working. Inbound, the loco was shoving...on the next outbound trip, the loco would be leading.

If the event recorder actually dates from 1995, it is obsolete per 229.135 and should have been replaced by a solid state CHMM.

While duration of recording is mandated at 48 hrs., the customary practice(s) I am familiar with involve performing a download during the FRA mandated periodic maintenance (89 day inspection).

Dave

_________________"Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse."-Thomas Szasz

When Bella Dinh-Zarr was asked whether the trailing event recorder should have been working, she said that when they are not working, they are usually replaced. Then she said, “But we will just have to hope that the front one was working.”

Look at this video at 12:25 and at 12:25 for hearing answers to two questions about the requirement for event recorders:

_________________"... he felt that the will of the people should be observed. Which is all well and good, but ruling based on opinion polls, especially ones pushed by narrow agendas, is never a great idea." Throne of Stars - D. Weber, J. Ringo, 2003

the one report I saw/heard they saw the engineer slumped. If his hand was on the throttle he could have inadvertently pushed it up. If he had a sudden health issue that makes sense. This is all theory. No memory of the accident tells me a few things either he was blacked out prior or the impacts caused memory loss.This sounds like the only way this could have happenned, a freak accident.We'll see how the investigation goes.

Regarding the NY Times article, I don’t think the crash can be blamed on a lack of funding. If funding is inadequate for safe operation, the proper thing to do is either fund the operation or shut it down.

When the Minneapolis 135W bridge collapsed, politicians rushed to the microphones and blamed the taxpayers for not being willing to pay for infrastructure. Of course it is the government’s responsibility to inspect and maintain bridges for public safety. They are not allowed to hold safety hostage to funding.

The NTSB has stated that the event recorder on the locomotive (on the trailing end of the train) was not required to be working; because it was on the trailing end. They seemed to have dismissed the failure of the one not working on the basis that it was relatively old, and dating from 1995.

Which leads to another question-why would a non-functional event recorder not put the locomotive out of service (regardless of whether it was the controlling unit or not? In the aviation industry, we have mandatory Minimum Equipment Lists. On aircraft required to have a Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder, those instruments are on the MEL. If an item on the MEL is not working, the aircraft is legally considered non-airworthy and cannot be operated. Freight and passenger operations are different animals-in freight you often have multiple locomotives on a train, so having one unit with a non-functional ER is less of an issue. On passenger trains, you rarely have more than one cab car and locomotive or more than two locomotives, so having a non-functional ER is more important.

Well, since the terminal is a stub type, the locomotive would have certainly been in violation the instant that it became the head end power for the next trip. We don't know if the loco was scheduled to be replaced before the train left on its next trip.

Regarding the NY Times article, I don’t think the crash can be blamed on a lack of funding. If funding is inadequate for safe operation, the proper thing to do is either fund the operation or shut it down.

When the Minneapolis 135W bridge collapsed, politicians rushed to the microphones and blamed the taxpayers for not being willing to pay for infrastructure. Of course it is the government’s responsibility to inspect and maintain bridges for public safety. They are not allowed to hold safety hostage to funding.

The real problem is politicians of a certain stripe who do not believe in funding transit because they are captive to other transportation interests, namely highway. Not getting as much attention is transit in Ohio, where the average spending per resident on transit funding is only 63 cents per person/per year, and both light and heavy rail services of Cleveland RTA are in dire need of total equipment replacement to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, with no inclination from Gov. Kasich to do anything about it. The national average for funding transit in most states is $15-20/per resident/year. And if you think I'm being harshly partisan, it is a fact that his Sec. of Transportation had been a lobbyist for the asphalt paving industry before becoming ODOT Secretary. These politicians are wedded to a strict ideology of only private industry, and do not believe in doing anything for the public good, unless it makes a buck. This must end.

On a personal note, I can't wait to see the corpulent criminal Gov. of NJ wearing an orange jump suit as a guest of either the NJ or federal penal system. Can't happen too soon.

"On a personal note, I can't wait to see the corpulent criminal Gov. of NJ wearing an orange jump suit as a guest of either the NJ or federal penal system. Can't happen too soon."

OK, that does it. I've been waiting, fruitlessly, for a continuation of discussion of the effect of this accident on anything historic or preservation related. Move this thread to railfanning and be done with it.

"On a personal note, I can't wait to see the corpulent criminal Gov. of NJ wearing an orange jump suit as a guest of either the NJ or federal penal system. Can't happen too soon."

OK, that does it. I've been waiting, fruitlessly, for a continuation of discussion of the effect of this accident on anything historic or preservation related. Move this thread to railfanning and be done with it.

So, let me get this straight. Combining references to a NY Times article that lists multiple instances when the current Governor of New Jersey has deliberately sabotaged NJ Transit and it's future for political gain, quite possibly contributing to the accident this thread is about, with a comment about recent revelations of his probable criminal conduct in a revenge scheme against the Mayor of a NJ city belongs under "Railfanning"? I'm not the first preservationist to note that if railroading does not have a future, then eventually nobody is going to care about it's past. Certainly the actions of said Governor have done nothing but threaten the future of regional rail transit in the Garden State, and hence interest in the future of rail preservation in the region. (Maybe a little bit of a stretch, but not much).

Yes, it belongs under 'railfanning', as does any discussion of PTC, sleep apnea, deflicted event recorders and the conspiracy behind how they might have gotten that way, poison gas, weird alien mind control, or other things involving the train wreck itself. Which is what this thread has increasingly consisted of for the last several posts.

And words like 'corpulent' and 'orange jumpsuit' have little place in a discussion of preservation aspects associated with damage to Hoboken Terminal (or other items of historic-preservation interest involved).

It might be appropriate to bring up your own thread about what Christie's policies or actions have done to hamper effective historic preservation in New Jersey. And probably appropriate to bring up any criminal tendencies that do, in fact, bear on a question of historic preservation. But that is certainly not the case in the context of this thread.

Thanks for that, Sandy (not). I'm tired of and will no longer tip-toe around other people's extreme right-wing positions. Our friends across the pond have no problems with their government's subsidizing really good rail passenger service, which makes possible most of the historic main line steam operations we pine away for here. The NY Times article that was referenced gave like half a dozen instances where the current NJ governor deliberately sabotaged NJ Transit to satisfy his supporter's extreme ideological stance of not paying for necessary services. I'm just as entitled to express my progressive outrage about that, as any right-wing ideologue here is to rage about their mistaken Libertarian ideology. I think it's rather unfair of the moderators to only allow the right-wing views to be openly expressed. This idea that government cannot spend any money correctly has got to stop while we still have any infrastructure left to salvage. My time is getting too short to play the long-term game of waiting for things to change.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum